


Foundling

by SalParadiseLost



Series: Into the Air [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Brother Acquisition, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst, Brothers, Child Neglect, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jack and Janet Drake's A+ Parenting, Jason Todd Has a Heart, No Sex, Omegaverse SFW Week 2021, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Protective Jason Todd, Tim Drake Gets a Hug, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake-centric, Wing Grooming, Wingfic, abo for pack dynamics, cuddles & snuggles, preening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 06:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30085020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalParadiseLost/pseuds/SalParadiseLost
Summary: All Tim wanted was for his flock to come back home.-----*Omegaverse SFW Week Prompt: Pup || Presentation || Scenting*
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Series: Into the Air [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2211846
Comments: 33
Kudos: 369
Collections: Omegaverse SFW Week 2021





	Foundling

**Author's Note:**

> My second entry into both my wingfic collection and the Omegaverse SFW week. This story fills the prompts of Pup (in this 'verse Chicks), Presentation, and Scenting. 
> 
> Species:  
> Bruce Wayne: Verreaux's Eagle  
> Dick Grayson: Common Kingfisher  
> Jason Todd: Lammergeier  
> Tim Drake: Jacobin Cuckoo  
> Damian Wayne: Red-Backed Shrike and Eastern Red Bat
> 
> You can see the species on my wingfic pinterest board [ HERE ](https://pin.it/6Mv8r6h).

Tim shivered, puffing out the thin layer of feathers on his wings. He was fledging. His wings felt like they were on fire and were itchy all the time. No matter how much he twisted and combed through the fluff, he couldn’t do anything to take away the feeling.

He scraped his wings against the edges of the nest trying to relieve the sensation. It was constant heat, burning right under the skin of his wings, and he just wanted it to stop. Please. Please stop. But it didn’t, and the cold bits of cloth did little dampen the stinging.

Tim felt frustrated tears prickle at his eyes as he tried to brush away the feeling by desperately flapping.

The stinging didn’t lose any of its bite and Tim crumpled into a miserable heap at the bottom of his nest. _Please, please, please,_ he chanted again. Please make it stop.

He whimpered and instinctively keened into the dark. It was a hatchling call of _Please. Help. Flock._ It was supposed to bring his flock closed to him.

It didn’t work if his flock wasn’t there to answer.

Tim trembled as he felt a sob beginning to rise in his chest. It was stupid to even try. His parents were in Thailand. They would never hear his keen and he wasn’t even supposed to be doing it.

Keening was for babies. He wasn’t a baby. He was a fledgling and that meant he was getting to be full grown.

It was probably better that they didn’t hear it anyways because of they did they wouldn’t be happy with his behaviour.

Tim cut off a second keen that wanted to rise in his throat and just shoved himself deeper into his makeshift nest.

He pulled a wing around him, clutching onto the limb. The feathers were coming in black just like Mother’s and, sometimes if he let himself, he could almost imagine they were Mother’s. The patchy bits of his own down ruined it, but it was close.

He hoped that Mother would be proud of his adult feathers when she saw them. The ones that had come in were shiny and iridescent, turning blue and green in the right light, just like Father’s. When he had first seen them, he had been so happy, he had almost taken a picture and sent it to his parents.

Of course, he didn’t because he didn’t want to bother them, but he was sure that they would be happy when they came back home.

And maybe, if they were happy, they would stay a bit longer.

Tim shoved his head into the bend of his wing.

Bits of down floated around him, white speaks landing on the hastily put-together nest of rags.

He knew that there was something wrong with it. The walls of the nest didn’t hold the correct shape. The bits of clothing stolen from his parent’s room were lumpy under him.

And the worst thing, it didn’t smell right.

He shifted in the nest, trying desperately to find a trace of his parents.

His mother’s gentle honeysuckle. His father’s warm wood. The scents that were them, that showed that they were still here in some sense.

But it didn’t matter how many shirts he pulled from their closet (he knew he shouldn’t. He wasn’t allowed to. He should be a good chick) nothing smelled like them anymore.

He gave a high-pitched keen that rang through the large house around him and the only response that he got was an echo.

His mother would think that he was pathetic.

Cuckoos were supposed to be independent. Proud. Able to stand on their own two feet. They didn’t cling to their parents as other chicks did. That was supposed to be why he was good.

So why didn’t he feel anything like that?

Tim made another sad warble out into the house, wishing that his mother would suddenly be there to rush through the door and scoop him up.

He was getting too big to be held, he was partially fledged, but he still desperately wanted it.

Anything. Anything to fill the hole in his heart where his flock should be.

The itchy fire in his wings sunk its teeth in deeper.

One week. Only one more week of this, then his parents would come home.

Please come home.

**

_Dear Timothy,_

_Father and I have received news of an exciting new dig opportunity that will extend our trip for approximately two more months. Ms. Mac has been informed of the change of schedule and has agreed to continue to check-in on you during the weekends. Be good and use your best judgment._

_Sincerely,_

_Mother._

**

His parents weren’t there when he presented one month later.

He had thought the sting of his fledging was bad, but it was nothing compared to fire of his first Heat.

He screamed on the cold wood of his Manor’s floor, writhing and trying desperately to get his senses together. His body was melting. He was melting. He didn’t know if he could survive this.

Fire rippled through his body, and he couldn’t stop the tears that were rolling down his cheeks and dropping on the floor.

His wings flapped and thumped against the floor, the smacks echoing all around him. The limbs were beyond his control, jerking and twitching violently as waves of heat washed over him. It almost felt like they were trying to fly away from him, to rip themselves from his back and leave him alone on the floor.

Maybe if that happened his parents would finally come home.

Snot and tears dribbled down his face, and he sobbed wetly. His instincts were telling him to flee, to move, to hide in a nest, but he could hardly force himself to breathe, let alone stand.

What was happening? What was he supposed to do? Why did everything hurt so much?

Tim keened and the desolate sound became the only thing he could hear. The hallway stretched around him, the panels and the faces from the paintings glowering down at him. Those painted eyes seemed to pin him to the ground, making him want to hide behind his thin, half-fledged wings.

He wanted his parents. He wanted his wings to stop hurting. He wanted to put out the fire inside him.

He wanted _someone. Please._

Fire roared inside him and yet it was beginning to pale in comparison to the heart-shattering loneliness that had cut a hole in Tim’s chest.

His instincts told him that he should keen, he should keen until his parents came, even though he knew logically they wouldn’t.

Tim didn’t know how long he stayed curled up on the floor of the hallway. The world had gotten blurry and he had submitted to the fire in his belly long ago. He thinks that maybe he passed out, he didn’t know for sure between the pain and the consuming darkness.

Eventually, the fire in his stomach became embers and some of the control returned to his body. Now that he could string thoughts together, he knew what the fire had meant.

A heat. His _presentation_ heat. He was an omega now.

A cold feeling of anxiety hit his stomach.

An omega.

A word. A designation that didn’t feel like his. Or maybe it did?

What was he supposed to do?

He tried to scrape his mind for everything he knew about omegas. He knew what they learned in class. He knew facts and dates and important figures and…

None of that helped him.

All of that was black and white words on a page to somehow calm the swirling mess and fire inside him. The pain was ebbing away, but that only left the fear.

Was this normal? What happened next? Was he supposed to do something, or had he already messed everything up?

A sinking feeling of dread suddenly filled him.

_What if he had messed this up?_

Was it even possible to mess up a presentation heat? Was it supposed to hurt that much? What if there was something wrong with him?

Panic flared inside of him and all the feathers on his wings began to puff up. He wouldn’t know, even if things had gone terribly wrong.

Could he be dying?

His breath was coming too quick and shallow in his chest and Tim struggled with the air around him. It gripped his heart with icy claws, and Tim wanted to tear at his own chest to get it out.

His wings seized on his back, panicking along with the rest of him.

It was so much. This was all too much.

He gulped at air, and then forced his wings to snap close to his body. He brought the wrists of them up, nuzzling them against his own cheeks. His breath began to even, and Tim huddled into his wings, wrapping them comfortingly around his body.

He tried to convince himself that they were Mother’s wings. That his black feathers were hers. She was the one holding him close, cooing into his wings and petting the baby feathers on the back of his neck.

He tried to convince himself that his father was here. Rumbling calmly and gently reassuring Tim that everything was alright.

He tried to create a flock for himself, people who would care that he was scared and alone.

He knew they weren’t there. But it was a nice dream, and he fooled himself for a little bit.

Eventually, with the intensity of the Heat was still trickling out of his body and Tim was finally able to stumble to his feet. His wings ached from the strange position he held them in, and he didn’t bother to pull them against his back. They dragged on the ground behind him, collecting dust between the feathers. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Tim just needed to go and get back to the one place in this house where he felt safe. He clamoured his way to his room and into the small nest he had in the closet. It looked pitiful, even to him, but it was all he had.

The nest didn’t feel comfortable anymore, even when he put his favourite blanket on him and blocked out the light with his wings. Everything just felt… wrong… different…broken.

He wanted to go back to yesterday, when things made sense and he wasn’t afraid of this new feeling inside of him. He wanted someone to tell him he was okay and stroke his feathers like he remembered his Mother doing long ago. He just wanted _someone_ to care and not leave him alone.

He keened, the sound hollow and empty. Empty like all the other rooms in this manor. Empty like the place in his heart where his flock was supposed to be.

Tim waited for an answer that didn’t come. He keened again. And again and made every single desperate hatchling sound he could until he eventually gave up.

He swallowed down the rest of the keens in his throat, clutched shirts that didn’t smell like his parents anymore and _cried._

**

Jason would never let Dick know that he was right.

If his brother knew, it would only inflate his already extremely large head. And at this point, Jason was pretty sure it was about to burst.

He groaned, laying on the ground and staring up at the branches he had just crash-landed through. Dick had told him not to trust the air currents that day. He said something about a coming storm and yada yada yada…

Jason had stopped listening at that point, but now he wished he did.

His muscles screamed as he sat up, protesting every little movement. He shifted his weight, moved so he wasn’t sitting on his tail feathers and brought his wings around so he could look at them.

The russet feathers were fluffed in agitation, grumpily full of dirt, sticks and loose leaves. Dust was collecting between the feathers, and Jason grit his teeth at the uncomfortable feeling. Dick was going to have a hell of a time preening through them and the kingfisher would undoubtedly gloat through the entire thing. Maybe he could convince B to do it instead to save himself some of Dick being a dick. 

Jason grumbled as he felt along his wing bone. It ached something fierce, but as he skimmed the bone, he was grateful that nothing felt broken or shattered. It was a sprain probably. Annoying, but so much better than the weeks a broken wing would have grounded him with.

Gingerly, he stood, brushing some of the dirt off his aching body. He wanted to shake violently, but before he could even try, his wings screamed in protest.

He grit his teeth, and folded them against his back. His tail wagged in displeasure.

Flying back home was definitely out of the question if he couldn’t even shake his wings without pain.

He dug in his pockets, drawing out his phone only to see it shattered. Shit, he must have landed on it during his crash.

Which means he was going to have to find some other way back home. Some cold feeling that he refused to call anxiety settled in Jason’s stomach. He wasn’t that far from the Manor, he could probably walk back if he needed to.

He looked up at the rapidly setting sun.

He better get moving quick if he didn’t want to get stuck in the dark.

Walking through the manicured forest was torture with aching wings on his back, but he didn’t stop until a gleaming manor came into view.

It wasn’t as huge as Bruce’s, but it held that same bourgeoisie pomp that extremely rich people just naturally had. When he was younger, a place like this would have put him on edge and twisted his face in a snarl.

But now, after living with Bruce for a few years, he was reluctantly used to the snobby air of money.

He just hoped that some kind of rich old widow lived here, a nice lady who would see a downed hatchling and coo over him like he was younger than he actually was.

He dragged himself up the marble stairs and knocked against the door.

Jason waited, and after a couple of minutes knocked again.

There was movement, and the click of a lock, and then the door opened a crack to reveal a small, pale face.

A fledgling?

He barely looked old enough to be that. The kid still had downy fluff littering the shoulders of his wings.

They stared at each other for a few moments, before the child said in a tiny voice. “Hello?”

“Uhhh, yeah, hi. I crash-landed in your yard and broke my phone, so I was wondering if I could use yours?”

The fledgling blinked, before all of a sudden, he was a flurry of motion, opening the door and letting Jason in.

“Yes, of course. Yes, come in. I can bring it to you right now.”

The fledgling turned, dashing off in the dim manor and leaving Jason standing in the yawning front hall.

Jason blinked, breathed, and was hit in the face with the sour scent of _hurt omega._

His instincts growled inside him, his feathers flared, and he was instantly put on edge. The obvious distress in the air made his skin crawl and he looked in the direction that the kid was scurried off into.

Was it him? He didn’t seem to be in much distress, but Jason had only seen the kid for a minute.

Jason scented the air, trying to find the smell of the other people in the house. The kid was obvious and current, but everything else was stale. Almost dead. Like they hadn’t been here for months.

But that wasn’t right?

This kid was a fledgling. He couldn’t even fly, let alone be left in a house all alone.

Where was his flock?

The kid came trotting back, holding a phone almost reverently to Jason. As he took it, he scented the kid again.

Oh yeah, definitely omega and _definitely_ in distress.

He dialled the familiar number on the phone and waited for it to ring. Bruce picked up after a couple of moments.

“Hello?” Bruce asked, polite but clearly confused about the foreign number.

“Bruce, it’s me.”

Bruce made a sound of recognition and the distant politeness was instantly replaced by anxious dad. “Jay? Where are you? Why aren’t you calling from your phone?”

Jason shifted his feet anxiously. “Remember how Dick told me not to go flying today? I didn’t listen and I crash-landed.”

He tensed, ready for Bruce’s anger, but all he got was his dad’s voice becoming more frantic. “Are you hurt? Do you need me to come find you?” Jason heard the sound of moving furniture, and he could imagine Bruce three seconds away from jumping into the air.

“Hold your horses, B. I’m not hurt. I’m hanging out with another kid at his house. He let me borrow his phone. Did you know our next-door neighbours had a fledgling?”

Bruce paused and then offered, “the Drakes? But they are on vacation?”

“I guess not,” Jason said, crinkling his nose. Because the house certainly _smelled_ like they were on vacation, if not for the desperate fledgling standing in front of him.

“Oh okay. Do you need me to send Dick to come pick you up?”

Jason almost said ‘yes’, but then his eyes flickered to the obviously lonely child in front of him. The pieces were beginning to become clearer, and Jason hated the picture they were painting.

“Can you come? I think you should be here.”

Bruce sucked in a breath, and when he spoke next, it was all Batman. “Are you in trouble? Say the phrase ‘nighttime’ if you’re in trouble.”

Jason rolled his eyes at Bruce’s paranoia. “No. I promise I’m okay. I just think—” his eyes went to the omega. The kid was pretending not to be listening to Jason’s every word.—“I would feel better if you came.”

Bruce didn’t need to be told twice. “Alright, I’m coming. Just stay put.”

Jason agreed, then with a quick word of goodbye, he hung up the line and handed the phone back to the fledgling.

“Your father… is coming here?” The kid sounded suddenly nervous and that lit some of the instincts in Jason up.

“Yep,” he said, forcing himself to sound casual. He tried not to make it obvious as he searched the house for signs of habitation. There was just… nothing. No other scents. No mixed-together flock smell.

Just a lonely kid and the sour aftermath of a painful Heat.

Jason winced at that one. He knew first-hand how bad Heats could be, especially the first couple ones.

“So, where’s your parents, kid?”

“Thailand,” the fledgling chirped, and it was like getting punched in the gut. He had suspected, but he thought the kid would just say Metropolis or something, not the other side of the friggin’ world.

The kid blinked up at him, as if there was nothing wrong with the statement. Jason took a large gulp of air.

“And when do they get back from Thailand?”

The kid hummed, and Jason watched as his wings rubbed anxiously against each other behind him. There was something neurotic and jerky in the movement that sent an unsettling feeling into Jason’s stomach.

“In another month? They didn’t tell me an exact date and they usually extend trips, so I don’t know for sure.”

_Another month._

That implied the kid had been here _months._ Months without a flock or anyone to take care of him. Months that he was alone.

Jason’s eyes fell to the kid’s half-fledged wings, and suddenly the twitchy motion made startling sense.

The kid wouldn’t be able to preen himself. Hell, Jason didn’t even know if the kid knew he had to. Jason remembered what fledging was like, the constant itch that stung and burned under his skin that could only be taken away by his mom’s careful strokes.

This kid had gotten none of that.

Jason sighed, feeling intensely underqualified as the fledgling stared up at him with huge, blue eyes. The kid seemed genuinely excited to have him there. Jason didn’t blame him, he’d also be excited to get human contact after being left in a house alone for months.

Careful with his injuries, Jason sat on the floor and waved the kid towards him. The little bird edged forward slowly, unsure but intensely curious.

“What’s your name, baby bird?”

The kid stuck out his bottom lip, his feathers puffing. “I’m not a baby.” Then, after a pouty pause. “Timothy Drake.”

Jason smiled crookedly. He liked the spunk on this one. “I’m Jason. Now, why don’t you sit in front of me. I can show you how to preen.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this second entry to the series. This was actually the first story I had finished and I'm very excited to share it. Thank you all for the enthusiastic response I've gotten on this wingfic series so far! I'm so happy you all are liking the wings + pack dynamics as much as I do.
> 
> \-----
> 
> You can visit my tumblr at [ SalParadiseLost ](https://salparadiselost.tumblr.com) where I post tumblr things and general writing musings.
> 
> Please leave a kudos and comment! Flattery gets you everywhere.


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